Chevron awards US$ 2.8 billion of gas field construction work

Oil company Chevron has awarded contracts worth some US$ 2.8 billion for its Gorgon Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in Western Australia. These include a US$ 2.06 billion order for Hyundai Heavy Industries - the largest in its history - for processing facilities and a US$ 744 million package to Boskalis Westminster for port construction.

The Gorgon gas field off is some 200 km off Australia's northwest coast. According to Chevron, which will extract the gas in partnership with Shell and ExxonMobil, the area has reserves of 40 trillion cubic feet of gas - the energy equivalent to 6.7 billion barrels of oil, and will cost US$ 37 billion to develop. The first gas is due to be produced in 2014.

Construction work will focus on Barrow Island, some 50 km off the coast, where a processing plant will be built. This will be used for LNG exports, while a sub-sea pipeline will be built to take gas ashore to feed into the Australian domestic gas system.

Boskalis Australia's contract is for the construction of a port and offloading facility at Barrow Island, including 200 m of quay walls, mooring points and a roll-on, roll-off facility.

Hyundai's work will also focus on the island, where it will build 48 fabricating modules to process the gas. Carbon dioxide released during the liquefaction process will be injected into porous rocks beneath Barrow Island, making it the world's largest carbon capture project.